Stuff+, Pitching+, Location+

[btdart20]

FG is now including Stuff+, Pitching+, and Locatin+ in their stats.  It'll be interesting to see how these stats hold water over time.  Here's a brief write-up.

PitchingBot and Stuff+ Pitch Modeling Is Now on FanGraphs! | FanGraphs Baseball

I filtered down to the O's with 10 IP or more to get the bulk.  Only Voth, Wells, and Akin are over 100 for each metric.  Bautista stands alone in stuff+ and pitch+.  Then Hall to a lesser degree.

Baltimore Orioles Leaderboards » 2022 » Pitchers » 36 | FanGraphs Baseball

[nvpacchi]

Eno always raves about Tyler Wells on his podcasts and he is super high on Bradish this year too. understandable when you verify with his stuff numbers.

love that fangraphs is hosting these statistics now!

 

[CaptainRedbeard]

Felix was #1 in Stuff+ last year, by a huge margin. 165 and second place was 147. 

[Tony-OH]

I believe I've made my thoughts on Stuff+ as an evaluation tool. It's way too inconsistent and not backed by statistical success at the big league level.

[CaptainRedbeard]

9 hours ago, Tony-OH said:

I believe I've made my thoughts on Stuff+ as an evaluation tool. It's way too inconsistent and not backed by statistical success at the big league level.

Fangraphs has an article explaining the predictive power of these stats:

https://library.fangraphs.com/pitching/stuff-location-and-pitching-primer/

The reason to use a model like this is simple: it’s predictively powerful. Before the season begins, Pitching+ out-predicts any current projection system for relievers when judged by the size of the Root Mean Square Error, as seen below by the bottom blue line. Once the season gets going (curved line), it takes about 250 pitches before in-season Pitching+ beats preseason projections for relievers. Here the horizontal lines represent pre-season ERA projections for the different projection systems as well as the previous year’s actual ERA, FIP, and xFIP. A linear transformation was performed to bring the previous year’s Pitching+ to an ERA scale. For the line plot, the RMSE is measured between the in-season Pitching+ up to that pitch number and the end-of-year ERA. So for all pitchers who threw at least 50 pitches, the RMSE in the first point is between the transformed Pitching+ at the 50th pitch and the end-of-year ERA.

Starters are a little more complicated, as they have more robust on-field result samples and deeper arsenals, but the story is similar. Before the season, starting pitcher Pitching+ has a lower RMSE when compared to on-field results (ERA) than most projection systems. In season, Pitching+ begins to beat pre-season projections by around the 400th pitch, or four or five starts in.

Pitching+ also predicts rest-of-season results better than K-BB% in smaller samples:

If Pitching+ is so powerful, why split the model into Stuff+ and Location+? That has to do with how quickly each becomes reliable — Stuff+ becomes reliable 80 pitches into the season and is extremely powerful relative to any other single stat in the tiniest of samples, while Location+ takes something more like 400 pitches to reach a similar level of stability (a high barrier, Chronbach’s Alpha ~0.9) — but also with how sticky each component is year to year. Below, you can see how sticky Stuff+, Location+, and Pitching+ are year to year, and how Stuff+ drives most of the season-to-season stickiness of the overall model:

On any given pitch, the location is hugely important, more than the stuff. But stuff is stickier season to season and start to start, so it’s a safer bet; as noted here, the free agent market has also been paying more for stuff than location recently. 

The longer a pitcher is in the big leagues, the more their actual results matter when weighed against their Pitching+ numbers. But being able to judge a pitchers’ ability to throw good shapes and velocities to the right locations should also have separate value to those trying to evaluate hurlers because of how quickly those shapes, velocities, and locations become meaningful.

 

[Tony-OH]

2 hours ago, CaptainRedbeard said:

Fangraphs has an article explaining the predictive power of these stats:

https://library.fangraphs.com/pitching/stuff-location-and-pitching-primer/

The reason to use a model like this is simple: it’s predictively powerful. Before the season begins, Pitching+ out-predicts any current projection system for relievers when judged by the size of the Root Mean Square Error, as seen below by the bottom blue line. Once the season gets going (curved line), it takes about 250 pitches before in-season Pitching+ beats preseason projections for relievers. Here the horizontal lines represent pre-season ERA projections for the different projection systems as well as the previous year’s actual ERA, FIP, and xFIP. A linear transformation was performed to bring the previous year’s Pitching+ to an ERA scale. For the line plot, the RMSE is measured between the in-season Pitching+ up to that pitch number and the end-of-year ERA. So for all pitchers who threw at least 50 pitches, the RMSE in the first point is between the transformed Pitching+ at the 50th pitch and the end-of-year ERA.

Starters are a little more complicated, as they have more robust on-field result samples and deeper arsenals, but the story is similar. Before the season, starting pitcher Pitching+ has a lower RMSE when compared to on-field results (ERA) than most projection systems. In season, Pitching+ begins to beat pre-season projections by around the 400th pitch, or four or five starts in.

Pitching+ also predicts rest-of-season results better than K-BB% in smaller samples:

If Pitching+ is so powerful, why split the model into Stuff+ and Location+? That has to do with how quickly each becomes reliable — Stuff+ becomes reliable 80 pitches into the season and is extremely powerful relative to any other single stat in the tiniest of samples, while Location+ takes something more like 400 pitches to reach a similar level of stability (a high barrier, Chronbach’s Alpha ~0.9) — but also with how sticky each component is year to year. Below, you can see how sticky Stuff+, Location+, and Pitching+ are year to year, and how Stuff+ drives most of the season-to-season stickiness of the overall model:

On any given pitch, the location is hugely important, more than the stuff. But stuff is stickier season to season and start to start, so it’s a safer bet; as noted here, the free agent market has also been paying more for stuff than location recently. 

The longer a pitcher is in the big leagues, the more their actual results matter when weighed against their Pitching+ numbers. But being able to judge a pitchers’ ability to throw good shapes and velocities to the right locations should also have separate value to those trying to evaluate hurlers because of how quickly those shapes, velocities, and locations become meaningful.

 

They can make all the definitions they want, when they tell me that Michael Bauman have one of the best STUFF+ four seamers and then you see how major league hitters hit that pitch off him, and you have to questions the reality.

[interloper]

1 hour ago, Tony-OH said:

They can make all the definitions they want, when they tell me that Michael Bauman have one of the best STUFF+ four seamers and then you see how major league hitters hit that pitch off him, and you have to questions the reality.

Maybe the issue is his Location+.

[Just Regular]

Whispered prayers that another year of healing has just brought back a little bit more of what Baumann used to be.

Its more likely its forever gone, but its just data readouts of a few dozen pitches measured by all the gadgetry.

They'll tell me if he makes the roster soon enough.

[interloper]

Just now, Just Regular said:

Whispered prayers that another year of healing has just brought back a little bit more of what Baumann used to be.

Its more likely its forever gone, but its just data readouts of a few dozen pitches measured by all the gadgetry.

They'll tell me if he makes the roster soon enough.

He has looked a bit better this spring than his ML appearances last year, just velocity wise. He pitches today and I think he's an underrated challenger for a bullpen spot, especially with Baker massively struggling.

[waroriole]

1 hour ago, Tony-OH said:

They can make all the definitions they want, when they tell me that Michael Bauman have one of the best STUFF+ four seamers and then you see how major league hitters hit that pitch off him, and you have to questions the reality.

Baumann has one of the straightest FB I’ve ever seen. That’s a big indictment on Stuff+

[Just Regular]

7 minutes ago, waroriole said:

Baumann has one of the straightest FB I’ve ever seen. That’s a big indictment on Stuff+

That is my lived experience too but I haven't seen the miniscule sample size giving these pitch metrics recently.     Hopefully we all get a look today....can he pull a Bradish adjacent performance?

His previous outing the 3rd inning given him caught me by surprise.

[waroriole]

1 hour ago, Just Regular said:

That is my lived experience too but I haven't seen the miniscule sample size giving these pitch metrics recently.     Hopefully we all get a look today....can he pull a Bradish adjacent performance?

His previous outing the 3rd inning given him caught me by surprise.

He’d be better off if they let him move into a full time RP role. The only way his FB plays is if the velocity increases a few ticks and batters don’t see him as often.